


Krishna

by toujours_nigel



Series: krishna, kunti, o kounteyo [1]
Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Chromatic Source, Gen, Hindu Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-14 08:37:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/834876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After their loss of Indraprasth, the Pandavs-in-exile receive guests.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Krishna

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aureliano_B](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aureliano_B/gifts).



> for Amrita Chatterjee.

Her husbands are afraid. There is an animal stink of terror to them that is pleasing to her heart. It rises from their skin as the scent of sandalwood once did. They could kill her brothers, even brought so low, but instead they huddle together like guilty children. They vowed to protect her, when they wed her eighteen summers gone: to cherish her like a daughter and respect her like a mother, desire her like a mistress and love her as a friend. It has come due now, the debt they owe Panchal, when they most urgently need its strength at their backs.

It has been a month of days since she walked still bleeding with them out of the halls of their grandfathers and into the forests they so fiercely love. In the courtyard of her palace the flowers have bloomed and withered and blossomed again; ripe fruit has fallen, unpicked and uneaten, to the yellowing grass and rotted. Her maids have put her sons to bed and woken them and persuaded them that tomorrow, today, in a week, they will see their mother’s face: they are still all so young, the eldest not yet fifteen, and Arjun’s sons barely two. Still, even fourteen is too old for a nineteen year old to treat as a child, and she had found it impossible to stifle laughter when Yudhishtir had caught her hand and murmured, “I’ve always wondered how the Pitamah treated Mahishi Satyavati.” Prativindh, in the courtyard with the jewelled lotuses, was showing Subhadra every form of respect save the one correct for a mother.

Two months ago, the last lingerers gone after the Rajsuya Yagn, and the palaces of Indraprasth becoming home again after weeks of ringing with the voices of strangers; her sons running wild through its halls and gardens, catching each other up and losing enough of their awe to try and pull her into their games; Abhimanyu left to her charge and beginning to walk, with Srutakirti babbling encouragement and Srutasom hovering like an anxious nursemaid. Her _home_ , which she loves with a mother’s ferocious yearning, which Yudhishtir gambled away while his brothers watched.

A month is the time it takes for news to travel across the plains to Panchal and to return with princes in chariots. At dawn, scouts rode into their camp to tell her that her brothers have come hunting after her with the King’s Regiments of Panchal. It is no ill thing that her husbands should be afraid; it is not strange. She paces the perimeter of their camp once, and then retreats into the stable to bury her own fears in horseflesh; at least the animals are loyal to her, even if it is only for lumps of jaggery; it is more than her husbands are. In the distance there is the sound of many hooves striking the earth.

* * *

At high noon her brothers ride into camp in splendid cacophony. Dhrishtadyumn, who has spoken these five years with the Voice of the Throne of Panchal, draws rein to speak to the deposed Kings of Indraprasth. The regiments surround the camp and her maids and attendants startle in shocked glee as hundreds of cavalry men dismount and stand at parade-rest.

Shikhandi, who is here out of simple love for her, rides on and dismounts almost into her waiting arms. He strides forward to catch her up, his hands strong in her hair and on her waist, his lips fervent on her brow. When she was five and ten and fifteen, another of Drupad’s daughters growing to beauty in his halls, and he was eighteen and twenty-three and twenty-eight and shedding all traces of accidental femininity, he had been the one man in her life who had loved her, as her father had not, as her twin could not: there is a comfort in his arms that she has found nowhere else.

He dips his head and mutters, “We left Krishn in the dust, but he’ll be here in an hour. Tell me before he twists the truth, Panchali. What did they do to you?”

He wants to kill them after he’s heard. His fingers fist and clutch around the hilt of his dagger, and he glares at the knot of her husbands surrounding Dhrishtadyumn with enough hatred to draw Arjun’s wary eye. “Panchali, you’ve to come away with us. Don’t shake your head, my darling. You’ve given them enough, and they’ve given you little enough in return.”

She says, “Did Hiranyavarm’s daughter, O son of Panchal, walk away from you?”

Shikhandi laughs. “She loves me, O daughter of Kings.” His hand is gentle in her tangled hair. “I know, I know. It’s a terrible thing, isn’t it? Love. These weaklings, they gambled you away. And you’ve protected them.”

“They’re my husbands. And it was only Yudhishtir who did it.”

“The rest of them sat watching; you’ve said it yourself, just now.” He says, “What do you think they’re telling our brother?”

“That they didn’t mean to do it; that it’s his one flaw; that it would not have been royal to end the game while there was aught left to lose. I’ve heard the story, they told it me in the gaming-halls.”

“What does it make a woman with four living husbands, if one of her husbands is killed?” There is a tension in the arm around her shoulders that belies the lightness of his tone. “Your sons are safe. My darling, come away with us, raise your children in Panchal; you can join the Pandavs when they return from exile. It is not a sentence laid upon your shoulders.”

“Does our Royal Father think so too? Do you speak with Panchal’s Voice in this matter?”

“Panchal offers its allies support in its dark hour. That is understood.” Dhrishtadyumn has grown a beard in the months since she’s met him: at Indraprasth last, with Srutakirti at her breast and Prativindh and Satanik looking over her brother’s weaponry. Bheem had been a shadow at his shoulder even then, though more affectionately received.

She rises to meet him; this brother always makes her feel her slight bones, her small stature: Shikhandi is not very much taller than her, his shoulders are not much broader; Dhrishtadyumn tops her by two heads and a half, her shoulders are held in the cradle of his massive hands joined thumb to thumb. He touches her at the wrist and wraps the dry warmth of his palm around both her dark hands. She is the blue flame running beneath his golden fire: always thus, since they were sixteen and first acknowledged the royal children of Drupad of Panchal. “My darling.”

She says, “The Throne of Panchal offers support to the Pandavs. What say the Princes of Panchal?” Shikhandi is still standing ten paces behind her, his left hand clasped around the hilt of his dagger. The Pandavs are a knot behind Dhrishtadyumn: Bheem at his shoulder, the twins behind Arjun, and Yudhishtir holding back in royal reticence. “What say my brothers?”

Dhrishtadyumn says, “The Princes of Panchal offer their swords and regiments to their sister’s aid and to the aid of her husbands.”

Shikhandi says, “Her brothers beg Draupadi to return to her home.”

“Her home is with her husbands,” Arjun says. They are very nearly the first words he has spoken since they walked from the gaming-halls of Hastinapur, beyond the necessities of survival; he has eaten one meal every day that Bheem has had to feed him, and slept two hours near dawn: his voice is hoarse from long disuse, and he cannot bear to bring his eyes up to hers. “We are beholden to her, we owe her our freedom.”

“And what do you propose to give her in return, Parth?” Shikhandi will be fifty before winter, he has been bending a long-bow since he was ten and before her husbands followed their father’s corpse from the mountains down to Hastinapur he was already enough a name for his sword to win a bride for him sight unseen; the weight of a great prophecy has done nothing to bow his slender shoulders. The united might of the Pandavs does nothing to give him pause: in hermits’ garb, newly delivered to safety by his sister, they are not an intimidating sight to an armoured Prince with loyal regiments at his back.

“I have given my word that I shall water her tresses with Duhshasan’s blood,” Bheem says. “And I will pour it still steaming down my own throat. My brothers have sworn their own terrible oaths. Will you hear them now, O sons of Panchal?”

For a moment she is afraid that the blood to wet her hair will belong to no enemy, but to those for whom her shattered heart will bleed. Then Shikhandi strides past her to pull Bheem into an embrace, and drags his head down to press his mouth in benediction to the brow. “I read his death in your words, and those of the Kauravs. What may I add by word or deed to your exploits of strength?”

Yudhishtir says, as genially as if he has palaces awaiting his guests, “Taste of our little hospitality. I have word from you of Vasudev’s arrival; till then rest in our humble cottages and partake of our frugal meal. We will try to feed your legions, though we had not looked for so ferocious an army.” In the moments when his brilliance touches upon earthly matters, there is no man she loves as much as she does the eldest son of Pritha’s womb; he has disarmed her brothers in one short moment with his show of weakness. The legions can be fed, but now they will remember that there are no regimental kitchens in the forests where the Pandavs shelter, though to tell them that she has cooked the meal might tip the scales again nearer disharmony. A careful path to walk, but when have her brothers ever asked after the identity of their cooks?

* * *

 

Krishn comes with a thief’s accuracy, at the moment when her maids are turning her blessed pot over to serve her brothers’ hungering soldiers. He has a double handful of soldiers flanking him, barely enough to comprise even an honour-guard: a squadron of dour infantry-men who form a square and lean their spears into the ground with practiced insolence. There is little doubt that they could hold off a regiment for as long as they chose: the Narayani Sena has earned its reputation in all the long-drawn battles of the Yadav’s, this last decade and longer.

The men around her rise to greet him. Dhrishtadyumn calls out, in a roar that can be heard clear across regiments in the din of battle, “We heard of your wars that you were winning them, Vasudev. It is sweet to see it proven true.”

In the melee of settling seven grown men in a space that holds no more than five, Arjun has come to stand beside her, and she feels all his long limbs strain with the effort of holding still, of not running like a child to the safety of Krishn’s arms. She knows it only for a moment, and then knows only movement. Krishn rocks on his feet as she flings herself against him, and then his imprisoning arms come up around her body, and he murmurs soothing nonsense into her ear as though she truly is a frightened child. For a moment it is like being embraced by father, brother, husband, child: here, at long last, is one to whom she is bound none of the ways a woman is tied to a man; to Krishn she is all things in being none, as he is to her. The pads of his fingers, stroking the hair away from her brow are lacerated with new scars; it brings her back to herself to feel them against her skin.

She pulls away enough to gaze upon his sombre face. “You have been fighting. I had not heard of it.”

“For my life. You might’ve guessed it, Panchali, without being told. What else could have kept me from your side when your need was so desperate?” There is a smile tilting his lips, and his embrace has turned quickly strange.

In her great horror, with Duhshasan’s hands grasping upon her, she had called him by every name he had ever been given since he was a thieving child amongst the cowherds of Vrindavan. She had not known that she had known all his names; she had not known what she had hoped for. There had been no help; no miraculous rescue had been affected for her. Every scrap of freedom she has now she has earned herself, naked and shamed in the gambling halls of Hastinapur. Subhadra had been safe in Indraprasth, and must now be safe in Dwaraka with her son. “Did you know?”

“I knew Duryodhan would consider himself insulted by the splendour of Indraprasth,” he says, and then to the Pandavs who have come to greet him, “but I could not see what path his vengeance would take, and I could not know, my cousins, that you would so willingly aid him.”

Yudhishtir says, “I could not have left the game when I had accepted the challenge.” It is the same story after all, she had been a fool to hope for newer truths to emerge in Krishn’s wake; the Dharmraj does not, cannot, lie, though he can gamble his life and family away on a throw of weighted dice.

She slips out from under Krishn’s arm, and tells her maids to serve all the soldiers. She sets out food for Krishn and places him between her brothers and the distance of five bodies away from Arjun. There is food still in the vessel: she could feed armies with a single fistful of rice, a sliver of fish. There is a mystery behind its giving that claws at her: there is no reason for Aditya to be pleased with her as Agni is with Arjun, nor does he number amongst the fathers of her husbands. Yudhishtir is explaining now at length that it would have been discourteous of him to leave the gaming hall after having lost only a year’s revenue to Duryodhan, or even his treasury, or his army, or his kingdom. She has heard the story morning, noon and night every day that has passed since Yudhishtir gambled with lives, she can tell it now in her husband’s voice and employ all his justifications and digressions: in a moment more he will speak of how he gambled away his brothers.

Krishn says, “But you do not own him. You did not sire, nor birth, nor raise, nor even teach him. You did not buy him at market, nor take him prisoner in war. By what right did you then throw him away on a roll of dice?”

Yudhishtir says, “He is my brother.”

“He is your sibling, not your son nor your slave. He partakes equally in all you have from your father, save only the royal title that you have by an accident of birth. Do you, O Dharmraj, believe that a monarch can sell his free subjects in open market for his own profit?” His voice has flattened into a sibilant whisper, his curls dance like snakes around his head; in his childhood he danced on the head of the Kaliya Naag, and the great serpent knew himself mastered. “Did Duryodhan bet any of his brothers?”

“He had no need of it. He was winning.”

“He would not have done it were he losing. He does not pretend to have the rights of a father over the sons of his father. He is a better brother than that.” She has never seen him so angry; she has barely seen him angry at all: he killed Shishupal lazily, with a flicker of the Sudarshan around his fingers.

“Our brother has all the right over us that our father once did. We do not dispute it.” It is true enough of Arjun. He had looked, in the moments she saw him, as though some enemy had his heart griped in crushing hands, but he had not spoken a word against his brother. Only Bheem had roared in anguish for her.

“And so I do not pity you. You, the greatest warriors in Aryavart, sold like slaves, like cattle to feed a gambler’s base hunger.” And now he is snarling, and her brothers’ regiments have drawn themselves up and are visibly wondering whether it will come to a fight in the end. Krishn looks like a lion let loose on a fatted herd. “You sat like stone, like all-suffering Earth, while lesser men claimed mastery over you. None of you, and all such vaunted braves, not one of you raised a hand in his own defence. You deserved it.”

“Did I?”

He whips around, mid-tirade, and snarls, “You made an enemy through pride of the only man at court who could have helped you.” She watches him flinch when he hears his own words, watches her brothers pale and her husbands draw away; she sees her maids scatter, and the soldiers exchange worried glances. All of it she is aware of quite distantly, through a haze of anger.

She says, still in her seat, the vessel still in her hands, “May you perish.” It has the weight of a curse, the weight of all her sorrow, but she cannot unsay it any more than he can unsay his judgement of her sins. The one is as pitilessly true as the other. She stands carefully, handing the vessel to one of her maids, and walks away with measured step. Her time is upon her again, and running to Krishn—like a child, like a fool—has unseated the tight band between her legs; she does not want to add spilled blood to her curse, as she did in Hastinapur.

* * *

 

They come after her in a deluge of men. They apologise. They call her Princess and Panchali and Draupadi while she stands with her back to the smooth bole of a mango tree and watches the birds. Shikhandi’s mare tugs loose of her bindings and wanders up to nuzzle at her hand. In the stable, her husbands’ horses whinny for their share of love and jaggery. She used to ride, when she was a girl at home, a horse very like her brother’s mare, probably a grand-dam to this one, or even older. It is a long time gone, now, nearly twenty years. Prativindh is nearly as old now as she was then, and she may not see him in twelve long years, till he has come into his man’s estate, a householder with his own family and a wife who has never met her husband’s infamous mother. A life’s length of miseries gapes ahead of her, of privation in the forest, of humiliation in hiding, of separation from her children. And Krishn thinks she deserves it.

He is speaking to her, carefully, insistently, while her husbands form a watchful circle and her brothers hover in the distance. When he was the young Prince of Mathura, and Shikhandi was herself yet Panchali, their fathers had spoken desultorily of their marriage; Shikhandi, all these decades later, has still not entirely absolved their father of guilt regarding the matter. In another life, Krishn could have been her sister’s husband; it is strange to think of: in another life, Shikhandi might have been her sister, still and still swelled with a fruitless rage. Perhaps he remembers that rage yet, that can burn a woman’s whole heart, and that knowledge lends such wariness to his man’s body, such strength to his grip on their brother’s arm: Dhrishtadyumn, who has always had a sword easy to hand, can have no knowledge of it, any more than her husbands. Any more than Krishn, who for all his wisdom is still a man who judges her moment of pride and would have judged her still had she married for his prowess the man she rejected for his birth.

She rouses when Nakul catches her hand away from the mare’s neck. “I would be alone.”

Nobody stirs. Bheem says, “Princess, come away. The heat of the mid-day sun is too strong for you.”

“I shall have my fill of the sun for twelve years. I would be _alone_ ,” she says again, and is obeyed. Her husbands retreat mutinously, and Shikhandi pulls Dhrishtadyumn after them. To Krishn she says, “I would unsay it if it were in me to so do.”

He says, unsmiling, “All men must perish. Have you wept?”

It is not a question she has been asked. Her mothers-in-law have counselled strength, have urged patience; her husbands have commended her fortitude. “I wept my last tears in the gambling halls of Hastinapur.”

“There you wept anger, Panchali, as any thwarted warrior might.”

“I have only anger left in me; I am hollowed out for its fire.” She feels clean, with it; she can even feel joy, for things that feed her slow-burning anger: though it might take her thirteen years she will have her vengeance. It is enough. “Do not make of me a weakling, Vasudev, there is not that in me which you can build again.”

“Krishna, you are the rock on which the dynasties of Aryavart will break. Your rage will destroy the Kauravs.” He cups her face in his hand, tips her head back to look into her eyes. “Your tears do not shame you, Kshatriyani, any more than mine unman me.” For he is crying, now, in very truth, and his tears fall upon her face and into his cupped hands.

It breaks a dam within her heart beyond which she has been storing all her softer sorrows. She will never hear Srutakirti form his first words, or see Prativindh married, or Srutasom ride his first horse. She will never have the chance to raise her younger sons into adolescence or watch her elder two grow into adulthood. She will never again see the monsoon clouds gathering over her terraces or hear the first songs of the new harvest. She will never see the walls of Indraprasth again, or walk with Kunti through the jewelled halls. She will never offer worship in her temple to Durga, nor spend hours arguing with Dhaumya about an obscure point of law. All her life is gone, because her husband is a fool and his cousins are avaricious, lecherous creatures. And this last is the familiar treading-ground of rage and she has traced its contours time and again in her mind, but now it prompts her first tears.

He holds her as she weeps, he kisses her hair and makes her promises. “Every tear you shed I shall see a thousand-fold shed from the eyes of Kaurav wives; every man who took pleasure in your sorrow I shall slay. Every tear sees me deeper in your debt. Weep, that you may be better revenged, Krishna.”


End file.
